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Platform

I’ve been writing a lot about how new technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality are on pace to transform and disrupt the brand experience. Recently, I came across a company that has plans to create totally immersive, persistent virtual worlds. In simpler terms, it wants to “build the Matrix.“

Gaming online has opened up so many possibilities for interacting and engaging with an ideal target audience. As the online experience has matured, virtual simulated worlds such as SecondLife, World of Warcraft, and now Worlds Adrift have become increasingly popular places to hang out and spend time. Each has gone beyond the gameplay, focusing on building an immersive, ever-changing BrandedWorld.

The technology behind Worlds Adrift comes from a UK company called Improbable that wants to build massive-scale simulations of reality, and they just raised $502 million to do it. What separates Improbable from others is their cloud-based operating system, SpatialOS, which is currently in beta.

Where Blizzard’s World of Warcraft MMORPG is divided into multiple “servers,” Improbable’s SpatialOS platform gives you the power to seamlessly stitch together multiple servers and game engines like Unreal and Unity to power massive, persistent worlds with more players than ever before.

A great use case of Improbable’s technology is Worlds Adrift, which is currently in a closed beta. Here is the latest official gameplay trailer.

WORLDS ADRIFT Official Gameplay Trailer 2017

How Will This Technology Expand into Other Use Cases?

According to Improbable’s CEO Herman Narula, the “next major phase in computing will be the emergence of large-scale virtual worlds which enrich human experience and change how we understand the real world.”

Ultimately, Improbable envisions their tech being used for simulations of complex real-world systems, such as the behavior of fleets of autonmous vehicles. Deep Nishar, managing director at Softbank, share’s Improbable’s vision, that SpatialOS is the next crucial step in computing, alongside developments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and internet of things.

This technology space is exciting to watch as more use cases become apparent. There is an opportunity for this type of technology to help explore disease, improve cities, understand economies and solve complex problems on a previously unimaginable scale. Once those opportunities come into play, the brand experience will forever be transformed.

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Video is becoming the dominant medium for viewing, interacting, and engaging online. While Snapchat and Facebook are both rising quickly as video platforms, YouTube has maintained its position as the biggest hub for online videos. In fact, YouTube is now serving a billion hours of content per day. The challenge for brands looking to take advantage of video online is to develop a strategy to carve out a space among the fierce and growing competition.

Where do you start?

Starting any new channel on a particular platform, let alone a YouTube channel can be pretty overwhelming.

But it doesn’t have to be!

From a brand strategy perspective, the first thing you will want to do is think strategically about the channel, why it should exist, and what purpose it is serving to its subscribers and viewers alike.

Let’s start with the basics

Choose and Develop Your Brand Identity

Focusing on a particular topic, be it fashion, beauty, technology, lifestyle, business, marketing, or gaming, make it clear to your audience. This will allow you to focus on a particular area and build a fan base around that particular topic. Need help clarifying your brand?Book a Brand Strategy Roadmap session.

Follow Your Passion

When you begin any project, it’s incredibly important that you are excited about not only the medium (writing, podcasting, or in this case, video) but also about the topics that you are going to be developing content for. Without that passion, it can get extremely tough to keep going when it doesn’t feel like progress is being made.

Video Thumbnails are Key

YouTube, like all other platforms are built to compete for a viewer’s attention. Video Thumbnails entice a viewer to click on a video, save a video for later, or even subscribe right away. To increase views, use bright backgrounds or closeups of your face showing strong emotion to grab attention.

Show Off with a Great Channel Logo

While your brand logo or personal photo are the first things you may think of to use as your channel logo, take a step back and think about where the channel logo will appear across the platform and on social media. It may be that your YouTube channel is themed around a particular niche and a sub-brand should be developed specifically for that channel.

It’s a first impression – make it count!

Create Artwork for your Banner that Pops

When you get visitors to your YouTube page, be it on mobile or desktop, you want to develop a consistent look and feel. Your brand should feel consistent. Because of this, you want to create artwork for your banner that pops and grabs attention.

Tie it All Together with a Compelling Channel Page

When a viewer or subscriber gets interested in your channel and brand, they are more likely to hang around and browse your page. This is where you need to think about your larger brand strategy and how your YouTube channel fits into it. Organize your videos into playlists, tie back to your main website, platform, or ecommerce, and make it feel as though it is an extension of your overall brand.

There are few things that lead to mistrust of a brand or individual when consistency is broken. I’ll talk about that more coming up.

Add Contact Info & Connect to Your Website

Your YouTube channel should have a clearly defined purpose and objectives that it is working to achieve daily. Be sure to include your contact info and connect back to your website in video descriptions and possibly the channel description.

Make your YouTube videos into an army of exciting, entertaining content designed to turn viewers into subscribers and eventually into customers (site members, clients, etc.).

Develop Recurring Segements

When you first think of video, you may think of long-form content. When I first thought about video online, I was thinking in terms of tv show length. The truth is, as you very well know, attention spans rarely last that long with highly produced television shows, let alone online video.

Instead, think about the segments around topics you want to produce. These can be 3-5 minutes in length. Then, develop content topics for each one. Now, take it a step further and designate a particular day and time for each segment type.

Develop a Consistent Publishing Schedule – And Stick to it!

When you do this, you eliminate the guesswork and build a consistent publishing schedule all at the same time! Consistency builds trust, and will go a long ways towards building an audience that cares about your message.

Here’s an example of what a segmented content schedule might look like:

A sample of what a video content schedule may include.

Beyond the basics, Mike Barrett of VloggingGuides put together an incredibly insightful infographic to help you build out your video content strategy.

VloggingGuides put together this incredible infographic with 68 ways to get more views on YouTube.

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Social selling has become a critical component for modern brands to master, both on and offline. Not knowing where to start, it can feel downright overwhelming. Let this infographic guide you at every stage of the customer journey. Let’s dive in!

Social selling. Social media. Social everything.

For the scrappy entrepreneur, or even the seasoned professional, social is complicated. What is the perfect social selling routine? How can you discover relevant content that sparks conversations with buyers? What is the best way to engage with buyers online? How can you track all of these interactions? And how to do you continually re-engage buyers so they don’t forget you and your brand?

I came across an amazing infographic, designed by Salesforlife.com, the most trusted sales resource for its clients enabling their transformation from analog to digital with their prescriptive training approach to acquiring the digital selling skills needed to boost sales.

This infographic was crowdsourced from 65,000 sales professionals to find the perfect social selling routine.

SalesforLife.com produced this amazing infographic – covering every stage of the buyer’s journey.

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Over the last few years, AI assistants have been on the rise. First, as a fun feature set, now ingrained as part of our daily lives. The personal brand experience, that is, how you interact with technology and brands is rapidly transforming. But will AI assistants and voice platforms rule the space? Let’s dive in!

What do you think about the voice platform?

Me personally, I’m sort of still a skeptic. Sure, I talk to Siri more – and I can see how voice could come in handy when our hands are occupied and can’t look at a screen. Yet, it’s still in its infancy. Which, I think is the perfect time for brands to take a good hard look at the technology, where it’s headed, and how it fits into their own brandedworld.

The Current Fragmented Brand Experience with Voice

I’ve started to use voice more, talking to Siri and getting comfortable asking for certain tasks to be completed. For example, Siri is great at playing a specific song seamlessly, without any trouble.

However, ask a more detailed question and Siri will provide you with results from an internet search. From there, you must unlock your phone and begin interacting with the screen and Siri, if you choose. As voice assistants become smarter, you can envision how the screen could almost disappear completely.

Sometime in the future, I will be able to have a full conversation with Siri, in which my voice, tone, and descriptions will be interpreted and understood by providing clear, logical answers. Hopefully, I’d also be able to assign Siri tasks to handle on their own, then update me when they are completed via email or text message.

With Amy, I’m able to email her specific tasks related to managing and scheduling upcoming meetings. Just recently, I had asked her to set up a meeting, thinking she’d find dates available for the following week, but not making that clear. Instead, Amy showed real ambition, offering to book a meeting for the following day with the client.

While not the best brand experience for the client, I was able to email Amy and let her know specific days and times for the potential client meeting that may work best. Amy then sent an email to the client, apologized for the incorrect meeting day/time, and offered new times. I was pretty impressed!

As I work more with Amy, I can pinpoint where I can improve my communication with her, which will improve the brand experience with future clients when setting up appointments.

Voice Assistants in the Age of Hacking

For all of the innovative systems we are building to improve our lives and create seamless experiences and reduce stress, there is a dark side that continues to bubble up more and more. Every technological system is a threat, and as we have seen lately, the world is constantly digitally under attack.

Joanna Goodman recently raised a number of fascinating questions regarding artificial intelligence and gender roles. As I read through her article, it got me thinking about how brands wish their AI characters to be perceived by their audience. In this article, I discuss three primary questions from Joanna’s article from a brand strategy perspective.

I came across an article on raconteur.net, written by Joanna Goodman. In the article, she asks several questions around artificial intelligence and gender roles.

Does gender matter in artificial intelligence?Does the fact that most virtual assistants default to female character reflect outdated social norms and prejudices?Do developers and brands need a gender agenda?

My objective for this post is to try and address the questions above from a brand strategy perspective. While it is incredibly hard to answer the questions for certain, there are several perspectives and perceptions surrounding artificial intelligence and how brands are developing immersive experiences around them for their audiences.

As the technology rapidly advances, brands are building and deploying bots at a rapid pace. For brands considering building and artificial intelligent bot, consider these three questions during the development phase and when seeking feedback from your audience. The results might surprise you.

Does gender matter in artificial intelligence?

Personally, gender should not matter in artificial intelligence. AI is a tool that can help humans leverage their time and increase their productivity. However looking at the current landscape of AI assistants on the market, it seems that gender plays a dominant role with each character.

Branding is a way to personify an organization, give depth to a brand’s character, and show relatability to a defined ideal audience. With this in mind, it makes sense for brands to give personality, characteristics, and assign a gender to the AI in order to make it more appealing and relatable to their intended audience.

Let’s look at a few examples of AI assistants currently on the market:

Apple’s Siri can be changed from a female voice to a male voice. Siri’s default is female.Google Assistant appears to be gender neutral with no name, however, comes with a default female voice.Microsoft describes Cortana as gender neutral. A little research into the name reveals its origins from the game Halo, which is represented as a female hologram.Amazon’s Alexa describes herself as “female in character.”x.ai’s Amy Ingram is female. A male option, Andrew is offered as well.

From the article, Joanna writes that,

This gender bias is not down to sexism by predominantly male developers. Rather, it is a reflection of outdated social norms and gender imbalance in the workforce that many big tech players are working to redress. It also mirrors ingrained human perceptions.

The fact that gender imbalance is present in AI is pretty alarming. It shows that on a subconscious level, society still struggles to develop technology objectively. Perception is in the eye of the beholder.

What the AI is intended to do determines whether they will be seen as subservient to humans, an added and valued team member, or a sidekick. While gender should not and does not matter, ingrained human perceptions seem to indicate otherwise.

Does the fact that most virtual assistants default to female character reflect outdated social norms and prejudices?

Here’s where it starts to get really interesting. As voice becomes the default interface, tech giants and brands are refining natural language processing (NLP) to make AI agents sound more human. This is done through intonation in response to punctuation, emphasizing capital words and lifting pitch if there is a question mark at the end of a statement.

But, it’s not so straightforward.

As AI agents combine NLP with machine-learning, they need to be monitored and guided to ensure that they learn from positive examples and do not take on prejudices that may be inherent in the data they use. Founder and chief executive Ben Taylor of Rainbird, an AI platform that models cognitive reasoning processes, shares the main challenge around AI and prejudice as unconscious bias. Taylor states that:

…when AI applications analyze big data and machine-learning adjusts the algorithm on which decisions are made, it is impossible to know what features it is basing its decisions on. And we have an unequal society.

Ideally, the user should be able to choose the gender they are most comfortable interacting with. Apple’s Siri provides this option. Google’s voice product has no human name to reflect its universality across Google’s product suite.

I view and treat AI assistants as valued team members. As I wrote in a previous blog post, I recently hired Amy Ingram (x.ai) to schedule meetings, in addition to Edgar, the hipster octopus, who posts to social media for BrandedWorld. Whether they are male or female, they are to be treated with respect just as if you had hired a person into those roles.

It’s human nature to anthropomorphize

Humans have been talking to inanimate objects for years, giving them names, genders, and personality. From a brand strategy perspective, it’s only natural to give an AI assistant product a personality and possibly a gender in order to help bring it to life. Humans seek companionship in objects – things we interact with.

My Apple MacBook and iPhone feel as though they have a personality of their own. Small quirks in the software become characteristics that I am able to overlook based on the deep relationship I have built with them.

My BMW was the same way. The first time I picked up my 2013 BMW from the showroom in Honolulu and drove it through Waikiki, I felt a connection with it. It knew what I liked as far as seat configuration, radio station presets, and emergency contact information, almost as if it was alive. While I willingly gave the vehicle that information, it then provided that information back to me at the appropriate time, which made it feel as if it just knew.

My 2013 BMW when I lived in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Starbucks, as a brand, has been anthropomorphized to the point where people have conversations with it on Facebook as if it was one of their friends. Starbucks communicates and responds, saying it will see them at their neighborhood coffeehouse. Soon, their mobile app will have an AI assistant named Barista. It will be interesting to watch how they bring barista to life through characteristics and personality traits.

Starbucks Barista will be able to chat via text or voice to help with your mobile orders.

Do developers and brands need a gender agenda?

Do we need to assign a gender to AI? I don’t believe we do. And, as we move further into the world of artificial intelligence, gender may be redefined to better fit the new technology being developed. Jason Alan Snyder, chief technology officer at Momentum Worldwide, says:

A brand is a metaphor for a story and the chatbot’s personality, and potentially its gender, are part of its story and therefore brand identity. But we don’t need to make AI conform to the gender binary of humanity in order to like it.

AI assistants serve many different needs

When you stop and think about the opportunity for AI across industries, there are several applications where it could be a fit. And when looking at the different applications, several interpretations of how the AI should act and behave come to mind. An office assistant would act differently than a companion, butler, or even sidekick. Some are subservient, others could be viewed as friends, or even equals.

I love interacting with Amy Ingram (x.ai) as a team member of BrandedWorld.co, Inc. My wife, on the other hand, prefers to have an AI sidekick to keep her company, answer questions, and have funny conversations with. While Siri can somewhat fulfill this type of need, more advancement is needed.

All should be treated with respect, regardless of the role they are playing. Stephen Hawking states that,

As gender roles shift, our attitudes towards AI and one another will evolve because gender doesn’t have a traditional role in this new world order.

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What are your thoughts on gender roles and artificial intelligence? Should developers and brands continue to build in human characteristics into AI? Should all AI be gender neutral? Should AI be identified as a new gender role altogether? Let me know in the comments or through social media.

Over the past several months, I’ve written and shared several articles on brand experience. The shift customers and brands alike are facing from the advancement of technology are rapidly changing and disrupting several industries with more on the way. In this post, I’ve rounded up the top 7 brand experience articles to help you develop a seamless, consistent experience for your customers. Let’s get started!

The brand experience is a passion of mine – so much so I’ve changed the name of this blog! I find that the individual experience people have interacting with a brand alters their perception, for good or bad. In order to help influence towards the positive, organizations must develop and deliver intentional, consistent, and memorable brand experiences.

In a world increasingly cluttered with marketing messages, how can your brand be heard? Permission marketing, coined and popularized by Seth Godin, is the opposite of traditional interruption marketing. Instead, permission marketing is about building an ongoing relationship of increasing depth with customers.

There are several hidden powers of developing a membership site as a platform for your brand. Both free and paid membership models allow you to enhance the brand experience you offer your customers and immerse them into your BrandedWorld. In this article, we’ll discuss four brand experience factors membership sites can leverage.

As technology sweeps over every aspect of our lives, the brand experience of how we interact and engage with products and services is continuously evolving. The conversational interface is the next wave of advancement towards a user interface that mimics chatting with a real human. In this article, I’ll explain what a conversational interface is and how it is set to impact your brand experience, both as a consumer and how your brand will choose to engage with your audience.

As video becomes more popular, etiquette around how they play in social feeds, watching them in social settings, and the brand experience of the video itself are becoming more critical. Plus, a new tool is about to change the video brand experience as we know it.

This post was inspired by Darby Sieben’s article on LinkedIn, in which he asked if you should treat your AI assistant with the same respect as a human. This question extends to the overall brand experience and how team members and customers alike interact and engage with the AI your brand may have or will be deploying in the future.

When Starbucks first launched mobile ordering through its app, it revolutionized their brand experience. No longer would you have to stand in line. Instead, you could order your drink, head to the pick-up bar, get your coffee, and continue with your day. However, in practice, the mobile ordering experience has not always been that smooth.

You’ve heard of virtual reality and augmented reality. Now, experience mixed reality, developed by Magic Leap. This technology will revolutionize how we interact and engage, allowing for an incredibly immersive brand experience like no other. Are you ready?